Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 336 · December 2
The God of Hope
“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”
This sentence is a prayer and it is printed as one. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. Paul is not describing hope or recommending it. He is asking for it, on behalf of people who have not got enough.
Which raises a question worth leaving open. If hope has to be asked for, what is a person to do on the days it is not there? The chapter offers no technique. It offers a supply line: whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Patience is in that sentence doing work, and patience is a word for time passing while nothing changes. Look also at who he is praying it over. He has spent a chapter and a half refereeing an argument about food and holy days between people who thought each other unspiritual, and he has just stacked four quotations about outsiders being brought in, ending with in him shall the Gentiles trust.
Somebody in your church annoys you on a point of practice and is running short of hope this month. That is exactly the arrangement Paul was writing into. Pray his sentence over that person by name this week, and do not tell them you did it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 336 is Desires Fulfilled (Psalm 145:19).